Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

Health information remains one of the most important subjects that internet users research online. Symptoms and treatments continue to dominate internet users' health searches, but food safety, drug safety, and pregnancy information are among eight new topics included in the current survey. In all, 80% of internet users gather health information online. Read more.

Drug Info Pamphlets Inconsistent from MedPage Today

Image via Wikipedia

By Kristina Fiore, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

The content, formatting, and word count of leaflets pharmacies hand out with medicines are inconsistent and should be subject to FDA guidance, researchers say.

Among written instructions given out with prescriptions of lisinopril (Prinivil, Zestril) and metformin (Fortamet, Glucophage, Glumetza, Riomet), about half failed to include directions on use and raised questions about comprehensibility, Almut G. Winterstein, PhD, of the University of Florida, and colleagues reported in the Aug. 9/23 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

"Private sector initiatives to provide useful [consumer medication information] have failed," they wrote. "Research is needed on effective information selection and presentation in terms of effects on comprehension, retention, and appropriate patient actions to derive optimal drug benefit."

The FDA regulates label information and guides that accompany drugs with safety concerns but not the content and format of consumer medication information (CMI) documents. The agency does, however, have a set of eight standards for CMI leaflets:

• State drug name and indication
• List contraindications
• Include directions about use
• Note precautions and potential harms
• List symptoms of possible adverse reactions
• Include general information and encourage patients to ask questions
• Be scientifically accurate
• Be comprehensible and legible

To assess the consistency of these documents, "professional shoppers" filled prescriptions for lisinopril and metformin in a national sample of 365 independent and chain pharmacies.

Continue Reading

Is What You’re Reading Junk? Evaluating the Quality of Mental Health Websites, Part 1 — Anxiety, Panic & Health

by Mike Nichols The internet allows patients, consumers, physicians, and other mental health care professionals to quickly access mental health information. Millions of Americans search for mental health information on the web every year. Whether the information is needed for personal reasons or for a loved one, millions of mental health-related web pages are viewed. Sometimes the information found is authoritative, unbiased, and just what was needed. Other searches end in the retrieval of inaccurate, even dangerous, information. This is the first of a 2-part series. The information for today is presented under the following headings: * What is the purpose of the site? * Who owns the site? How is it funded? * Be on guard for bias and competing interests * Authorship and affiliation are important * Authority and cited sources Tomorrow’s installment, Part 2, will continue with the topics: * How old is the information? When was it published or reviewed? * Does the site support the doctor-patient relationship? * Privacy, advertising, and other policies should be clearly stated * How does the site interact with visitors? Read Full Article: Is What You’re Reading Junk? Evaluating the Quality of Mental Health Websites, Part 1 — Anxiety, Panic & Health

Is What You’re Reading Junk? Evaluating the Quality of Mental Health Websites, Part 2 — Anxiety, Panic & Health

by Mike Nichols How do you tell the difference between good information and bad information? You need a guide to help you evaluate sites, to tell whether the articles presented are valid and accurate, to discover when someone is trying to sell you something, and to discern between a legitimate view and a crackpot’s rant. This two-part series of articles is intended to be a guide for you in your search for trustworthy information. It outlines the collective wisdom of medical librarians, mental health professionals, professional associations, and other experts who surf the web every day to discover quality information in support of clinical and scientific decision making by professionals responsible for the nation’s mental health. Read Full Article: Is What You’re Reading Junk? Evaluating the Quality of Mental Health Websites, Part 2 — Anxiety, Panic & Health

A New Health Care Quality Improvement Resource: WhyNotTheBest.org

The Commonwealth Fund has launched a new Web site, WhyNotTheBest.org, that allows health care providers, researchers, and professionals to easily conduct side-by-side comparisons of 4,500 hospitals nationwide, track performance over time against numerous benchmarks, and download tools to improve health care quality. WhyNotTheBest.org allows you to:

• Find the top-performing hospitals in the country on 24 nationally recognized measures of health care quality, including care provided for heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia, and prevention of surgical infection
• Compare a hospital against its peers
• Learn how to improve the quality of care delivery and patient satisfaction.

On the Web site, users can search publicly reported Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services performance data by a number of hospital characteristics--including region, ownership, and size--and measure performance against top performers and state and national averages.

WhyNotTheBest.org provides more than data. Case studies of high-performing hospitals and a library of tools offer lessons and strategies on ways to improve care. Featured tools include materials created by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the American Heart Association, and top hospitals around the country.

"There are many report cards that measure quality of care, but WhyNotTheBest.org is unique in that it allows providers to benchmark performance against leaders and track improvements, and it provides credible tools to help providers achieve better performance," said Anne-Marie Audet, M.D., Vice President, Quality Improvement and Efficiency, at The Commonwealth Fund.

All information, including tools, can be saved to a "My Profile" page for later use. Over time, new measure sets and functionality, such as an Improvement Calculator to track progress toward benchmarks, will be added. IPRO, a not-for-profit health care evaluation and quality improvement organization, conducted all data analysis and Web development for the site.

National Epilepsy Awareness Month --- November 2008

November is National Epilepsy Awareness Month. Epilepsy, which currently affects approximately 2.5 million persons in the United States, is characterized by recurrent, unprovoked seizures. Delayed recognition of these seizures and subsequent inadequate treatment increases the risk for additional seizures, disability, decreased health-related quality of life, and, in rare instances, death. Although epilepsy can occur at any age, the condition is more likely to begin in childhood or older adulthood. The number of cases among older adults is increasing as the U.S. population ages. The effects of epilepsy also can affect the transition to adult activities (e.g., driving and working). A multistate study by CDC indicated that approximately 1% of adults have active epilepsy, and many might not be receiving the best available medical care. To improve the health care and community support available to persons affected by epilepsy, the Epilepsy Foundation, in partnership with CDC, is conducting a multiyear national campaign to use public education and programs that foster community awareness. The goal of this year's campaign, entitled No More Seizures, is to increase the number of persons with epilepsy who can achieve optimum control of their condition (i.e., no seizures or treatment side effects). To achieve this goal, basic education and empowerment messages have been developed to encourage persons with epilepsy to learn about new treatments, seek the care of specialists trained in epilepsy care, and discuss the management of their condition with their doctors. In addition, persons who have experienced seizures can access a new website (http://www.nomoreseizures.org) to partner with the Epilepsy Foundation and others in managing their treatment for the condition. Other campaign activities include school-based health education programs, community workshops for diverse audiences, and training for older adults and their caregivers. In addition, the Epilepsy Foundation has developed pilot curricula for police and emergency response personnel and is evaluating a pilot comprehensive employment program to educate employers about epilepsy in the workplace. Their Epilepsy Resource Center supports consumers through online, telephone, e-mail, and regular mail services. Partnerships with other national and local organizations have been established to provide programs in public education and community awareness; these organizations include the National Association of School Nurses, AARP, Community Health Workers/Promotores National Network, National Council of La Raza, National Center for Farmworker Health, East Coast Community Health Centers Association, American Epilepsy Society, Police Executive Forum, and Hispanic Communication Network. Information regarding epilepsy and the national campaign is available from the Epilepsy Foundation by telephone (800-332-1000) or online (http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org). Information in Spanish is available online ( http://www.fundacionparalaepilepsia.org) or by telephone (866-748-8008).

Selling the subsidy: Questions remain on hospital-physician IT collaboration

By Pamela Lewis Dolan, AMNews staff. Nov. 10, 2008 in American Medical News Despite changes to federal rules that allow hospitals to donate health IT to physicians, studies show neither hospitals nor physicians are jumping at the opportunity.

National Diabetes Month, 2008

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States
of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim November 2008 as National Diabetes Month. I call upon all Americans to learn more about the risk factors and symptoms associated with diabetes and to observe this month with appropriate programs and activities.
 

KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION TO LAUNCH NON-PROFIT HEALTH POLICY NEWS SERVICE

Top Journalists from the Wall Street Journal and Congressional Quarterlyto Head Kaiser Health NewsService Will Provide Free, In-depth Coverage to Readers and News Organizations Menlo Park, CA -- The Kaiser Family Foundation is launching Kaiser Health News (KHN), an independent news service, to report on the nation's complex health care system and the increasingly urgent political and policy debates surrounding it. The goal of the new effort is to provide in-depth coverage and news at a time when cash-strapped news organizations are being forced to scale back their efforts in this crucial area. Kaiser Health News will be headquartered at Kaiser's Washington, D.C. building and be headed by two veteran journalists who have spent years covering health care. Laurie McGinley, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor, is the former deputy bureau chief for global economics and national health care policy correspondent at The Wall Street Journal. Peggy Girshman, an Emmy-winning editor and producer, is a former managing editor of National Public Radio and an executive editor at Congressional Quarterly. The centerpiece of KHN will be in-depth stories on new developments in the health care system and on health care initiatives and debates in Washington and in state capitals. Supplementing the stories will be columns, video interviews, graphics, and multimedia features, as well as a daily synthesis of news stories from around the country—which Kaiser already provides. “We are committed to making KHN a unique home and distribution vehicle for the very best in-depth journalism on health issues, a place people and other news organizations can go for stories and the most important changes occurring in health care and often mind-numbingly complex health policy debates,” said Drew Altman, president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation. "Journalists who work for KHN will have resources for research and travel to get out and cover stories where they are happening, and they will not have to compete with stories on other issues for space in the paper or time on air.” All news content will be available for free on a new Web site, www.kaiserhealthnews.org, expected to be launched in the early part of 2009. KHN will also enter into partnerships with news organizations to jointly produce and publish articles, and will provide content for syndication to news organizations in the U.S. and around the world, free of charge. Over the next several months, a team of full-time journalists will be hired and top freelance journalists will be recruited to write stories and series for distribution through KHN. All editorial decisions will be made by the editors of KHN, Laurie McGinley and Peggy Girshman. An advisory board of prominent leaders in the journalism community, to be announced at a later date, will provide guidance to KHN. McGinley, who was part of a Wall Street Journal reporting team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for AIDS coverage, has written and edited health-care stories for more than a decade. "I'm delighted to have the opportunity to delve deeply into this crucial area," she said. "Our goal is to increase understanding of complicated issues by producing accurate, detailed and timely stories." Girshman, who has won two Peabody Awards for health policy coverage, as well as national and local Emmys, said, "I can't think of a better place to be and a better project to work on at this critical time, when Americans are facing huge challenges about the future of their own health care." "The cutbacks in the news business have severely affected coverage of national policy debates," said Kaiser's Matt James, who is senior vice president for media and public education and will have responsibility for KHN. "The non-profit sector can play a unique role in making sure that the public has continued access to in-depth reporting on complex policy issues. And it is our hope to do just that in the area of health care, an issue that affects everyone." James has also overseen all of the Foundation’s media programs since 1991. The non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation is a non-profit, private operating foundation dedicated to producing and communicating the best possible information, research, and analysis on health issues. The Foundation has a long-standing commitment to journalism. It has operated its highly respected health policy fellowship and internship programs and global journalism training programs from its Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters since 1993. In addition, Kaiser has maintained long-standing partnerships with news organizations, including the Washington Post (since 1987), USA Today, and National Public Radio to produce timely policy-relevant polling. Since 2002, Kaiser has operated kaisernetwork.org, an online health policy information service, which provides daily online news synthesis reports, reports on developments in health on Capitol Hill, thousands of webcasts of health events in the U.S. and around the world, and a broad range of original programming from the Foundation's broadcast studio. Kaisernetwork will be merged into KHN, creating a comprehensive health news and information service.

Television As A Health Educator

The Kaiser Family Foundation has released a report on the use of popular television programs to provide health education. In the study, the foundation collaborated with the writer's of Grey's Anatomy to develop a plot line containing a specific health education topic. This study documents the enormous potential of popular entertainment television to serve as a health educator—even on a show that has a “soap-opera”-like feel and a comedic bent. A very large proportion of viewers absorbed the information that was provided in Grey’s Anatomy, and many of them had retained that knowledge six weeks later. On the key fact presented in the show—that an HIV-positive pregnant woman who gets the proper treatment has more than a 90% chance of having a healthy baby—the proportion of viewers who were aware of that fact quadrupled, from 15% before the show to 61% after it aired, an increase of 46 percentage points. The full report

H.R. 7200: Use the Internet to provide to patients and health care practitioners medical information

Introduced September 28, 2008 by Rep. Christopher Cannon [R-UT] and referred to the House Judiciary Committee TITLE I--Federal internet site for consolidation and translation of information on diseases and other conditions TITLE II--Patient and practititoner rights regarding practice of medicine TITLE III--Additional forums for exchange of health information TITLE IV--Legal immunity of drug and device companies